Finish the proverb quiz

Each question shows the first part of a proverb, cut where its familiar ending begins. Typing works like a fill in the blank exercise: the missing word or words go in the box, and the check compares them with every accepted ending. Picking turns the same question into multiple choice. Either way, the whole proverb and its meaning appear once the question is settled.

Every proverb in the quiz is split in two: a start that is shown and an ending to finish. The ending can be typed or chosen from four options, the right one and three endings of other proverbs, from the same theme first. Pick the meaning is the second kind of question, with the whole proverb shown and four meanings to choose from. The three wrong ones belong to proverbs about another idea, so two can never both fit. Meanings are always picked, never typed. After each answer the full proverb, its meaning and any other accepted ending appear. The result then counts the proverbs right, right with a hint and missed, and lists the answers.

An ending of up to 4 letters must be typed exactly, and longer endings forgive more typos, on a scale the quiz sets itself. A typo is a missing, extra or wrong letter, or two neighbouring letters swapped. Letters are counted without spaces or marks.

So "while the sun hsines" still counts as right, since two neighbouring letters swapped make a single typo. Capitals, accents, punctuation, spaces and a leading "the", "a" or "an" never matter, and typing the whole proverb, start included, counts too. Old or regional endings that the quiz also accepts count as well. A guess just beyond the allowance brings the message "Almost: check the spelling. That try did not count."

Each typed proverb allows three tries and up to two hints. The first hint shows the ending's letters as blanks, and the second the first letter of each word. For "The early bird ..." that is "_______ ___ ____", then "c______ t__ w___". A proverb finished after a hint counts as right with a hint, and Show the answer ends it at any time as missed.

The daily quiz deals ten proverbs in a fixed order: three well known, then four medium, then three rarer ones. Everyone playing in English on the same calendar day gets the same proverbs, and a new set starts at midnight on the device's own clock. Set 1 was played on 21 October 2026.

No proverb comes back until every other proverb of its level has been dealt. The 99 well-known proverbs take 33 days to go round, the 100 medium ones 25 and the 93 rarer ones 31. The three levels are the site's own judgement of how widely each proverb is known, not a published ranking.

Only the first finished game of a day counts towards the statistics: days played, days in a row, the best day and the share right on average. That run of days is the streak, and a replay is played but not counted. Copy result copies the set number, the score and a row of squares, with the page link. The squares are 🟩 green for right, 🟨 yellow for a hint and 🟥 red for missed.

Practice works the same way without the calendar. It takes any mix of the six themes, deals 10, 20 or all of their proverbs at random, the better known first, and can keep to well-known proverbs only. A month option sets the themes aside and draws every proverb naming the current month or a day in it.

It is advice to seize a chance, which the quiz words as "Make good use of a chance while it lasts". Read literally it is about farm work: hay has to be cut and dried in fine weather, before rain spoils it.

Most proverbs work on those two levels. The literal meaning is the picture the words paint, from the farm, the kitchen or the sky. The figurative meaning is the lesson drawn from it, which applies to life in general. Cambridge Dictionary captures this when it defines a saying as a wise statement whose meaning is often different from the simple meanings of its words. The five proverbs below show the step from picture to lesson.

• "Make hay while the sun shines": Make good use of a chance while it lasts.
• "The early bird catches the worm": People who start early or act first get the best chances.
• "An apple a day keeps the doctor away": Eating healthy food every day keeps you well.
• "Many hands make light work": A job is much easier when many people share it.
• "Don't judge a book by its cover": Do not judge someone or something only by how it looks on the outside.

Pick the meaning tests exactly this step. Cambridge Dictionary marks many proverbs as a "saying" and explains each one, so its entries are a free place to check a meaning the quiz gives.

A proverb is a whole sentence that gives advice or states a common truth, while an idiom is a fixed phrase whose meaning cannot be read from its parts. Cambridge Dictionary defines a proverb as "a short sentence, etc., usually known by many people, stating something commonly experienced or giving advice".

Its entry for idiom reads "a group of words in a fixed order that has a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word on its own". "Let the cat out of the bag" is an idiom, a phrase that only works inside a longer sentence. "Many hands make light work" is a proverb, complete on its own.

The neighbouring words overlap. Oxford Learner's Dictionaries describe a proverb as "a well-known phrase or sentence that gives advice or says something that is generally true", giving "Waste not, want not" as its example. Cambridge Dictionary defines an adage as "a wise saying" and a maxim as "a short statement of a general truth, principle, or rule for behaviour". "Saying" is the broad everyday word that covers them all.

This quiz keeps to proverbs and weather sayings. Idioms get a puzzle of their own in the emoji riddle quiz, where a row of pictures stands for a saying, a film or a song.

The quiz holds 32 proverbs that name a month or a day in it, at least two for every month, with saints' days from Candlemas to Martinmas among them. In October, the practice option "Only proverbs about this month" deals the quiz's two October proverbs. Their meanings give what each saying is said to foretell, and the quiz never marks a weather rule as true or false.

Weather lore is the traditional knowledge about the weather that such sayings carry. A familiar one is "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight". According to the Met Office, it is "most reliable when weather systems predominantly come from the west as they do in the UK". The idea behind it, the same page adds, first appears in the Bible, in the book of Matthew.

"St Swithin's Day, if thou dost rain, for forty days it will remain" is another. On this rhyme, the weather service notes that since records began "there has been no occurrence of rainfall for such a prolonged period of time". For cows lying down before rain, it says there is no scientific evidence. "If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, winter will have another flight" is a rule for February, and "Ne'er cast a clout till May be out" one for May.

In July 2017 the Met Office reported that 75% of UK adults use folklore to predict the weather. Red sky at night was used by 70% and believed by 83%, and the forecasters called it largely correct. The St Swithin rhyme was used by 22%. In the same story, Charlie Powell added that none of the methods are as accurate as official forecasts.

Collections of these sayings go back a long way. Richard Inwards gathered them in Weather Lore, first published in 1869; the copy cited here is the 1893 edition.

Real or made up? deals ten sayings, and between three and seven of them were made up for this site. The number of fakes is drawn at random each round, so counting the answers so far never gives the last ones away.

The quiz holds 68 made-up sayings, each written to sound like a real proverb. Some borrow the shape of a known one, some a country picture, a balance of two halves or a rhyme. After every answer comes the meaning of a real proverb, or a note on how a made-up one was built.

One example is never played, so it spoils nothing: "The kettle that sings loudest is the last to boil". Made up from two real proverbs: 'Empty vessels make the most noise' and 'A watched pot never boils'. A saying that sounds old is not proof that it is real, and the dictionaries in the sources are where a doubtful one can be looked up.

Print a sheet turns today's ten or a practice round into a worksheet. Each line holds the start of a proverb and a space to write the ending, with a line for a name at the top. The answer key, with each proverb's meaning, follows on page two, and only the sheet itself is printed. A real or made-up sheet has boxes to tick, Real or Made up, beside every saying.

In a classroom the sheet ties in with figurative language. The Department for Education's English programmes of study for England name no proverbs or idioms, at key stage 1 (KS1) or later. In years 5 and 6 they ask pupils to "discuss and evaluate how authors use language, including figurative language". The option "Well-known proverbs only (good for children)" keeps a round to level 1, the proverbs almost everyone knows.

The same printable sheet suits a quiz for seniors read aloud in a group, with the answer key kept by whoever reads. Age UK's Activity Pack 44 for care homes includes a "Finish the saying" quiz, meant "to keep you occupied". The Alzheimer's Society's Dementia together magazine of 1 June 2022 described a group in Newport playing a proverb card game as bingo.

That article noted that completing the proverbs "also prompted conversation about older sayings that people's parents used years ago". Reminiscence of that kind is a pastime and a reason to talk; the quiz makes no claim about memory or health.

There is no single figure. Collections differ in what they count as a proverb, and no British survey has measured how many proverbs a typical speaker knows.

Collecting them is old work. John Ray's A Collection of English Proverbs, first published in 1670, set them out with short annotations and already prints "The early bird catcheth the worm". The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, in print rather than free online, gives their meanings too. The quiz tells no origin stories: its meanings say what each proverb means now, while collections such as Ray's show the older forms.

The research on how well proverbs are known is American. In a 2008 study of college students in four US regions, Haas found that proverbs familiar in one region were generally familiar in the others. The students also recognised more proverbs than they could recall. In the 1930s, Albig and Bain found American students recalled 25 to 27 different proverbs on average, as Davis, Danforth, Mieder and Dodds reported in 2021.

The quiz itself holds 292 English proverbs in six themes, chosen and written for this site in their British forms. Its levels hold 99 well-known, 100 medium and 93 rarer proverbs.

For words rather than whole sayings, the vocabulary size test estimates how many English words you know, from real and made-up words.